Archive for July, 2008

Have you ever been watching a scene and said to yourself, “Man, I bet so-and-so would like this”? If so, we’ve got a new feature you’re going to like. You can now email a scene to anyone (over 18) whether they’re a member or not and even have it start at a particular time in the video.

So let’s say you’re watching Filthy Talkin’ Cocksuckers #2, scene 1 and you crack up at the ridiculous cumshot at the end. You’d click the Share This Video link under the download buttons:click image to enlarge

As some of you have probably noticed, the site is quickly approaching its 5,000th update. The big post goes up Thursday at 2:36pm PST. We’ve been planning this for a while and you’re in for a surprise. Can you feel the excitement?!

I’ve been meaning to write a blog entry for a while, but I hadn’t quite gotten around to it when we ran into this iPhone issue. So I thought I’d take the opportunity to introduce myself and talk about the issue at the same time

Who Am I?
I’m the Tech Guy, and my team and I are responsible for keeping the site up and running. We implement new features on the site, maintain and monitor our systems to ensure that the videos keep streaming, and build toolsets for our internal teams to use for encoding and labelling content. In short, we’re responsible for everything from networking to storage, from servers to systems, and from code to video codecs. Now that I’ve introduced myself, let me talk about the issue we’ve run into.

The iPhone 3g / 2.0 Problem
Recently the iPhone 3g was released, and like most tech geeks we were really excited. Quite a few of us have iPhones, and we couldn’t wait to see what the new one could do. Unfortunately, when we got our hands on an iPhone 3g we immediately saw a problem – iPod resolution files from VideoBox wouldn’t play. We saw a “This Movie Format Not Supported” message when we tried to play these files on the new iPhone. The problem got worse quickly, when we realized that older iPhones that were updated to the iPhone 2.0 firmware suffered from the same problem.

Now this was surprising, as Apple had said that there were no video related changes coming in the 3g or the 2.0 firmware. But we’re not the only ones who’ve been bitten by this issue – you can see more here

The good news is that we’re on top of it. Our H.264 resolution files can still be played on iPhones of all types. And we’ve found an encoding configuration that is compatible with the iPhone, compatible with older iPods and other devices that play these files, and still maintains the quality of video we expect.

What We’re Doing About It
We’re currently in the process of reencoding all the files in this resolution. We expect to be finished with this reencode process in about three weeks. These updated files will appear on the site as they are produced, so fewer and fewer scenes will have this problem as time goes on.

I’ll be checking back on this blog post over the next few days, and I’ll try to answer any questions you may have about this or any other tech issue in the comments. I’m also planning on posting more frequently – once a month or so – about technology issues that might be interesting to our users.

I think we can all agree that Chasey Lain ain’t what she used to be. In a lot of ways. But that fact did not prepare me for these two videos, released by a website producer who’d hired her for a shoot.

Chasey shows up to the shoot completely cracked out and proceeds to slur, stumble and curse her way through a nonsensical argument with the director that lasts for hours. Luckily, they condensed it down into 12 minutes of absolute trainwreck for easy consumption.

Part of me feels bad for Chasey and part of me finds it hard to pity someone who is so disagreeable and crazy, but all of me wonders why people are hiring her in this condition.

I have been considering adding H2 Video to our catalog. Surprisingly, this has led to a little debate in-house about it’s likely reception by our members.

So I wanted you to play my role for a minute. You need to remove yourself from your own personal interest and look at these previews from my perspective. The question I ask myself is, “on the whole will the community of users on VideoBox enjoy these titles?”

The production is generally the first thing I look at. This stuff is pretty well-lit and the camera work is good. There are some different girls than the normal Valley talent and the action doesn’t look so canned that it’s predictable. An extra plus is the light fetish for some of the users on the site that like that. What do you guys think?

Last month I had the good fortune to participate, along with several other adult film fans, in a brief online conversation with Melissa Lauren. Melissa was kind enough to answer the two questions I directed toward her, and her answers were fascinating. Here’s a brief tidbit:

“I guess anyone can fuck me, but I’m picky about who can dominate me. It’s something you gotta deserve.”

More from Melissa inside and then we’ll turn our attention to the mysterious Ms. Wonderhand.

I have had some many requests for my old implants that we removed last Tuesday by fans, adult sites and magazines, I am selling them on eBay.

They have been medically sterlized, and you get my silicone implants, an autographed DVD of Babysitters, and two autographed photos, one nude and one not nude, all beautifully framed!

20% of the proceeds will go to the Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Cure Fund through eBay, and the rest will go to pay for my new surgery I just had as well as my big legal bills now I have for my custody and legal battles.